The Romantic Foundations of the American Renaissance / Leon Chai.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Chai, Leon, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--19th century--History and criticism.

American literature.

Romanticism--United States.

Romanticism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (448 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

The Romantic Foundations of the American Renaissance illuminates the process by which the cultural legacy of European Romanticism was assimilated by and transformed in the literature of mid-nineteenth-century America. Leon Chai traces the development various governing concepts or tendencies from their genesis in British, French, and German Romantic traditions through their subsequent appropriation by such American writers as Poe, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Melville. Among the topics he addresses are the shift from allegory to symbolism; selected trends in Romantic science; the secularization of religion; the emergence of a historical consciousness and a philosophy of history; pantheism; the relation of subjectivity to objectivity in Romantic philosophy; and Romantic poets.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

A Note on the Sources

Introduction

PART I. From Allegory to Symbolism

1. Poe

2. Hawthorne

3. Emerson

4. Melville

PART II. The Foundations of Science

5. Poe

6. Emerson

7. Bichat, Balzac, Hawthorne: Vitalism and Mechanism

PART III. The Secularization of Religion

8. Emerson

9. Hawthorne

10. Melville

PART IV. The Historical Consciousness

11. Emerson: The Philosophy of History

12. Hawthorne

PART V. Pantheism

13. Poe: The Divine Energeia

14. Emerson: The Divinity of the Self

15. Alcott: Of "stages of the spiritual Being"

16. Melville

PART VI. Subjectivity and Objectivity

17. Emerson: Toward a Natural History of Intellect

18. Margaret Fuller: Woman in the Nineteenth Century

19. Hawthorne: The Blithedale Romance

20. Melville: Pierre

PART VII. Poetics

21. Poe, Cousin, and Kant: Transformation of a Neoclassical Aesthetic

22. Emerson on Classic and Romantic

23. Margaret Fuller: Criticism and Consciousness

24. Shelley, Goethe, Adam Muller, Melville: The Concept of Tradition

PART VIII. Epilogue: The Question of Representation

25. Shelley

26. Stendhal

27. Hawthorne

28. Melville

Primary Sources

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Nov 2019)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781501745669

1501745662

OCLC:

1129214213